THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 2, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 11:30 a.m. [ET] to conduct a study on foreign relations and international trade generally.
Senator Peter M. Boehm(Chair) in the chair.
The Chair: My name is Peter Boehm. I am a senator from Ontario and the chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Before we begin, I wish to invite committee members participating in today’s meeting to introduce themselves.
Senator Gerba: Senator Amina Gerba, from Quebec.
Senator Ravalia: Good morning and welcome. Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Nova Scotia.
Senator Busson: Welcome. I’m Bev Busson from British Columbia.
Senator R. Patterson: Rebecca Patterson, Ontario.
Senator Dean: Tony Dean, Ontario.
Senator M. Deacon: Welcome. Marty Deacon, Ontario.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Mi’kmaqi.
The Chair: I wish to welcome all of you as well as those across our country who may be watching us today on SenVu.
Colleagues, we are meeting today under our general order of reference to continue yesterday’s discussion on the issue of women, peace and security. To discuss the matter, we are very pleased to welcome, from Global Affairs Canada, Jacqueline O’Neill, Canada’s Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security. She is joined by Ulric Shannon, Director General of the Peace and Stabilization Operations Program. Welcome and thank you for being with us today.
Before we hear your remarks and proceed to questions and answers, I wish to ask members and witnesses in the room to please refrain from leaning in too closely to your microphone or to remove your earpiece when doing so. This will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff and certainly our interpreters who wear headphones for their jobs.
We are now ready to hear your opening remarks, which will be followed by questions, as per usual, from senators. Ambassador O’Neill, you have the floor.
Jacqueline O’Neill, Canada’s ambassador for Women, Peace and Security, Global Affairs Canada: Thank you, chair, and thanks to the committee for having us appear today and for this focus on women, peace and security. It’s certainly welcome and very valuable.
[Translation]
I’m accompanied today by Ulric Shannon, Director General of the Peace and Stabilization Operations Program at Global Affairs Canada. His team is in charge of the Women, Peace and Security Policy at Global Affairs. Mr. Shannon also represents Canada in the Women, Peace and Security Focal Points Network and acts as champion of that program within our department.
I will briefly go over my mandate and priorities, and I will then speak to some of the areas where we have seen progress around the world, and other where there has been no progress.
Afterwards, Mr. Shannon and I will be happy to answer your questions.
In 2019, through an order in council, I was appointed Canada’s Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security for a roughly three-year mandate. The Prime Minister then extended my mandate until 2025. Canadian civil society had been calling for such a position for a long time, and I’m extremely honoured to have the privilege and responsibility to be in that seat.
My main responsibility is to provide confidential evaluations and advice to ministers who take part in implementing Canada’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security about the ways in which Canada can continue to show global leadership.
My priorities are threefold: strengthen and expand the network of partners in the implementation of this action plan and the next one; support the creation of customized tools, resources and guidance documents; promote ambitious Canadian initiatives.
Since the creation of Canada’s first national action plan in 2011, Global Affairs Canada has been charged with coordinating and consolidating reports. My team at Global Affairs and I are regularly in touch with other departments, the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP.
[English]
This is the first time that I am appearing before this committee. However, I have testified to several Senate committees on this very subject in the past. I used to work for a non-profit organization based in the United States called the Institute for Inclusive Security. I was kindly invited to testify at the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. I’ll note that I did it by VTC from Washington, D.C. — this was many years before the pandemic — prompting several American colleagues to marvel to me about the cost sensibilities of Canadian parliamentarians for having introduced that so early. It’s a pleasure to be here in person today. I appeared at the committee on at least two occasions, including in 2012 and 2015.
To prepare for today, I looked back at some of the statements that I had prepared. Some things have changed. In 2012, there were 23 countries in the world that had national action plans on women, peace and security. There are now about 107. Several multilateral organizations have introduced plans, including NATO, the OSCE, ASEAN and the Africa Union. Canada had just released its first National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, and we are now drafting our third. Rates of women’s participation in UN peacekeeping were dismal and stagnant. They are now increasing.
However, too much has also not changed around the world. As you heard yesterday, civil society continues to call for much more consistent implementation of the WPS agenda. The UN Secretary-General released his annual report last week on this subject. He noted that women’s participation in peace processes is actually decreasing, including in UN-led processes. Across the UN-led processes over the last year, 2022, women’s representation was 16%, in 2021 it was 19% and in 2020 it was 23%. In peace processes led by national governments or other organizations, women were almost completely absent.
We’re seeing attacks on women peace builders and women human rights defenders increasing, online and offline. Even specific conflicts and regions are repeating patterns that their own communities have identified as problematic. In 2012, for example, I lamented to a Senate committee that in negotiations to determine the terms of separation between Sudan and South Sudan at the time, both sides had a six-member team of lead negotiators, all of whom were men. The high-level panel of facilitators from the African Union present at the talks also did not include even one woman. Last week, a female Sudanese activist elaborated in great depth to the UN Security Council about how the war that’s now ravaging her country was a reflection of continuing to ignore women’s rights and the treatment of women as collateral damage rather than as agents of their own lives.
We also continue to hear calls to recognize and resource the leadership of Afghan, Haitian, Israeli, Palestinian, South Sudanese, Sudanese, Ukrainian, Yemeni and many other women working for peace, including women from Myanmar and Indigenous women in Canada and around the world.
Along with colleagues within Global Affairs and across the Government of Canada, with continuous inputs from representatives of civil society organizations and Indigenous peoples, we are working hard to fully implement Canada’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security and to bring this agenda to life. We are in the process, as I mentioned, of developing our third plan, which we hope to see released in the coming months.
I’ll pause here. Mr. Shannon and I look forward to taking your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much, ambassador, for your opening comments.
Colleagues, as per usual, you will each have a maximum of four minutes for your question and, of course, that includes the answer. Please keep your questions as concise as possible. I would also encourage our witnesses to be concise in their responses. We can move to a second round if we still have time.
Senator R. Patterson: Thank you, ambassador.
I’d like to ask a technical question about where Canada is going with WPS. As we move towards Canadian national action plan number three, I believe it has a more national focus to get our own house in order. I’m wondering if you can talk about how that can help the Senate better shape their work. Certainly, with my colleagues, it’s a newer concept. Whether you call GBA Plus as the tool to accomplish that or whatever, it often gets done as an afterthought, a bolt-on, rather than a way of thinking. I wonder if you can comment on that and suggest how it could help us.
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you for the question.
It might be helpful to begin by emphasizing the difference between GBA Plus and the women, peace and security agenda. As you noted, they are often conflated. I often call gender-based analysis plus — this will be unparliamentary language — a goddamn national treasure for Canada. Sorry.
The Chair: I didn’t hear that, ambassador. You were being diplomatic. Please continue.
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you.
It’s a very useful tool to analyze and understand contexts, situations and possibilities from our actions. It’s a tool for understanding.
The women, peace and security agenda is a policy framework that describes the end state that we want to achieve so we can understand issues and who might be excluded, who’s included, whose interests are met and who will be disadvantaged inadvertently by a policy, but it doesn’t tell us that we are trying to ensure meaningful representation of women in particular, for example, in peace negotiations.
When we talk about our next national action plan, we’ve heard a number of inputs over many years now of trying to learn from our previous two and then also planning for our next one. As you mentioned, we hope to do some things a little bit differently. I can briefly tell you some of the things that we have heard will be important to change and some to make sure that we sustain. All of those are to be noted and emphasized by the Senate.
First of all, within the national action plan, we are one of the only countries in the world that has an official or formalized relationship with Canadian civil society organizations. As you’re looking at testimony and hearings, et cetera, we have a network of activists, individuals and specialists within Canada with respect to the RCMP, Defence and other areas. They are tracking what we’re doing very carefully and providing a lot of input.
We heard a lot about the importance of sustaining funding and the importance of Canadian advocacy and leadership on this issue. I know you heard a lot yesterday about regressions in women’s rights and the rollback of women’s rights globally. A lot of people are telling us about the importance of Canada continuing to talk about this, including parliamentarians in various chambers as well as all of our government officials. They must continue to do that.
As you referenced, we must recognize the deep connections between international and domestic issues. We don’t live in binaries. We recognize that barriers exist to women’s full participation in security institutions and as recipients and participants in peace and security in their own lives. We’re looking at more attention to transnational threats — threats, for example, made by governments against human rights activists in their home countries. They come here as refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants or in other ways. They continue to be targeted, even by their home governments. All kinds of issues relate to Canada, including the treatment and engagement of Indigenous women, girls and diverse people in Canada in shaping peace and security. Those are some of the elements.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator MacDonald: Thank you to the witnesses.
I want to speak about a success story, one with which I’m very familiar, and that’s Colombia. I am a member of the ParlAmericas executive. I was Canada’s representative on the board for a number of years. I made three trips to Colombia. I’m very familiar with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC. We met with them alongside government officials. In 2016, Colombia’s peace process between the national government and FARC has been presented as a “women, peace and security” success story. I believe it is. It is amazing how far they came in a short period of time. There was great participation by women. Could you reflect on that? Why was it such a success story? Is there a template there that you can use and apply to other jurisdictions in the world?
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you for the question.
Chair, I’m timing myself now to be more disciplined.
There absolutely is. You’re exactly right. Colombia is being held up as a model of inclusion. I will note the specific format used in the peace talks between the FARC and the government. Rounds of negotiations were happening, usually in Havana. There was a central, kind of formal official plenary, almost, and there were different working subgroups or tables on the thematic issues they talked about. Within that process, Colombian women had advocated for a specific gender-focused table with women from the FARC and women from the government, as well as men from the FARC and men from the government. They reviewed proposals. They provided input on upcoming agenda items.
For example, when negotiation terms were being proposed, the gendered table identified issues. They were looking at immunities for acts that might have occurred. There were immunities proposed for acts of sexual violence. They said they wanted to make sure no member of the negotiating teams or of the parties who committed sexual violence would get immunity because of being under the ceasefire or other provision. They also ensured there were women at all of the other tables.
People often ask what difference it makes. The women made a lot of difference to that peace agreement, including references to women and gender in the final agreement. Because of the women, it was one of the first times that the main parties heard directly from victims of the conflict. The women advocated to have victims of acts on both sides come and speak directly to all the negotiators.
To your point, it is very much a model. Colombia is trying to replicate it as appropriate for its current negotiations with the National Liberation Army, known as the ELN. Colombia is also looking at that model as it develops its first national action plan on women, peace and security. They’re trying to make sure they document what has been useful and good about that process and then building it into other plans.
I’m very happy to say Canada has been supporting Colombia in doing that. I was just there about a month or two ago. One of the things we are doing is supporting Indigenous women from across that country to formulate and provide input for this national strategy so that Indigenous women’s participation is reflected in processes that are both national but also can be replicated, as you said, as appropriate elsewhere.
Senator MacDonald: Thank you.
Senator Ravalia: Thanks once again for being here.
We heard from Professor Bouka yesterday that robust and effective dialogue and cooperation exist amongst women across the Sahel through the current turbulent times, including the military coups. She alluded to these informal dialogues between women in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger. It was almost described as a third-track mechanism.
How is Canada working to ensure that we are listening and responding to the perspectives and needs of these individuals who are obviously vulnerable and don’t necessarily get the first line of support? Are we taking into recognition the value and vitality of this type of process?
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you for the question.
We absolutely are, and I’m going to ask my colleague Mr. Shannon to speak a little bit about some of the ways that we’re not only recognizing the vitality but trying to support the women engaged in those processes through different programs.
I noted yesterday Professor Bouka talked about FemWise, which is a network across Africa of women, peace builders, negotiators and mediators. Canada has proudly supported that for the exact reason she mentioned. As you referenced yesterday, some track-one processes tend to be almost wholly exclusive, despite our constant efforts to open them up. Track one and a half or track two and sometime track three are where civil society and activists often have the most traction in getting space and where we see the effectiveness of their organizing. Again, yes, it’s not just listening to them but really trying to support them so they can influence track one as much as possible.
Perhaps Mr. Shannon can speak to some of the specific programming.
Ulric Shannon, Director General of Peace and Stabilization Operations Program, Global Affairs Canada: Thank you very much for that question.
I would add that not just in the Sohel but in most fragile and conflict-affected states where Canada does programming interventions, we do look at opportunities to support civil society, women activists and other community leaders to try to generate bottom-up pressure into those formal processes. As Ambassador O’Neill mentioned, the formal tracks are often devoid of significant participation by women. Obviously, we can’t ensure outcomes, but we do build that approach into our advocacy as well.
When I engage with governments — I was in Ethiopia, for example, earlier this year, another cessation of hostilities process that was noted for the absence of women’s involvement — we take a somewhat skeptical position because we say that we don’t necessarily think you have the elements of success here compared to, for example, Colombia, to your point, where again, as the Secretary-General noted in his report last month, the ELN process had, basically, gender parity built into it. For us, from both an analytical and diplomatic perspective, we automatically sense that there are stronger elements of potential success in the Colombian case than the Ethiopian one.
That is very much part of our advocacy, not lecturing governments but saying that there’s no shortage of qualified women looking for opportunities to participate in these processes, and Canada has contributed to building some of these rosters. FemWise is one example. We’ve built that capacity; it exists. In many cases, those women tell us the phone just isn’t ringing when these formal processes then take shape, so we’re working on both the supply and the demand, if you will.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you to our guests for being here.
We are, from yesterday and today and all kinds of other sources, certainly looking at two things: keeping our house in order in Canada and what we’re responsible for doing with respect to women, peace and security, and then trying to keep our eyes really targeted on the global piece. I want to ask a question about that.
Clearly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought NATO back onto an immediate deterrence footing, with troops being sent to the eastern borders and a debate on defence spending and preparedness. In your discussions with NATO allies, is the women, peace and security agenda still being authentically considered? Did it reach a critical mass where it’s considered in our defence analysis automatically, or is there a threat of it getting diluted or drowned out of these more immediate and more traditional security concerns everywhere?
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you. That is an excellent question.
You’re asking if it is automatically considered. As an agenda, often not, and never to the degree that many of us would be satisfied by, but what we see in Ukraine with respect to women, peace and security is what we see in many contexts, which is that the reality of the situation on the ground, the experience of conflict, highlights the value and the importance of women, peace and security. I can give a few examples.
The police force in Ukraine has been working for many years to try to increase the representation of women in the police. They’re now at about 25%. The deputy commander was here a little while ago and said the reason they have been effective to the extent that they have in entering into recently liberated areas is because they have a significant number of women on their teams, not just because of the women but because they have mixed teams. Their police officers are not trained in documentation on conflict-related sexual violence and rape as a weapon of war. They’re dealing with deeply traumatized people. They’re recognizing internally and with cross-border migration that the vast majority of people moving are women and children. That exposes them to enormous risks of human trafficking and various other threats, all kinds of challenges. They’re saying, “We as a police force are better able to serve our people because we’re starting to think about both gender dimensions of the crisis in the conflict as well as people in our own force.”
The minister of the interior of Moldova told me the same thing. She said they had been talking about women, peace and security and they have this national strategy, but it wasn’t really coming to life for them until they started to receive enormous numbers of Ukrainians crossing their border. They had large numbers of women and children at their border. Their border agents were not necessarily trained. They immediately had to start thinking about childcare, women’s health and reproductive needs, risks faced from human traffickers who are seeking Ukrainian women entering and exiting. They are saying that this is very much their issue.
The Russian military is proving in many ways the impacts of rejecting elements related to women, peace and security. They have recruitment campaigns of “Be a man. Join the army.” They’re trying to get more people in. They’ve got this very narrow version, which is exactly the opposite of what this agenda promotes. We’re seeing all sorts of impacts on the battlefield, such as lack of command and control structures, poor morale and really awful relationships in many instances with the Russian population.
We may not be naming it as such, which is fine, but we’re seeing a real précisé sur le sujet of women, peace and security through lived experiences.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much to both of our witnesses for being here.
Ambassador O’Neill, congratulations on your Vimy Award. It’s wonderful to see. We’re very proud of you. You and I have connections back to Roméo Dallaire and the wonderful work you did together so many years ago. I understand you’re still involved with the work out of Dalhousie, so thank you for that.
I have a question about the tables that we’re trying to be at and influence. You’re going to now see how much I don’t know. You’ve talked about women’s participation. I really appreciate the example of Colombia that my colleague raised and that you elucidated, this issue around police and military in Ukraine, and women at the table for various peace processes and representation of peacekeeping.
Right now, there are several horrendous conflicts going on around the world. Just looking at the Israel-Palestine hub of war and the horrendous things that have gone on and are continuing to go on there, do we ever try to influence, be at a table, with those people who are developing the strategy in the moment? Not after the fact, when we’re trying to make peace and figure out the spoils of war and who is going to get what and how that’s going to look going forward, but at the tables now, those hot tables, where I think women would be tremendous additions. Perhaps they already are. Fill us in, if you could, on the various tables and stages where we try to have that influence.
Ms. O’Neill: That’s a very informed question for a number of reasons.
The tables themselves are often disappearing. This is something that we hear a lot as it relates to engagement with youth. A lot of young people, especially young people who are on the streets leading revolutions, are organizing in totally different ways. They’re not forming organizations that have charters, a secretariat and sometimes even email addresses, et cetera. They can’t necessarily receive funding in the same way. They said, “We’re not waiting for a table or an invitation. We’re going to the streets. We’re mobilizing and demonstrating.” There’s peace-related work that is happening in those areas, and that’s a very different approach than looking at who’s on what side of the proverbial table. That’s changing and evolving quite a lot and something we have to be addressing.
To Mr. Shannon’s point earlier, the last thing that we want to do is try to insert a couple of women here or there and say women are part of the process and, therefore, this issue is addressed. We’re trying to look at the holistic context, including conflict prevention and putting in place relationship networks among women but between women and other decision makers as well, so supporting groups to be organizing, advocating and mobilizing before crisis emerges. That’s much of Mr. Shannon’s work in fragile and conflict-related states.
The last thing I’ll say on that is that in the Philippines, another example where there had been significant good practices related to women’s representation, the government’s lead mediator was a woman. Their panel of lead negotiators had three out of five women, and they credit the fact that there have been investments and activism by civil society women long before the official negotiating tables were struck.
The Chair: Thank you. I am sorry that you won’t have a word right now, Mr. Shannon, but maybe later on in the second round.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Welcome everyone.
Ambassador, you mentioned that 105 countries, and even organizations like the African Union, have already implemented national action plans through the women, peace and security program.
How does Canada’s action plan compare to the others? Does ours stand out in any way? Are there other plans that we could take inspiration from?
Ms. O’Neill: Of course. I can answer that. I will answer in English to be as specific as possible.
[English]
In terms of what is special about ours, there are several things. As I mentioned, we’re one of the only countries on earth that has an official relationship with civil society in our plan. We have an advisory group set up to launch, and that advisory group is co-chaired by a civil society network, the Women, Peace and Security Network of Canada. That means there’s predictability in their relationship with us, they know when they’re going to get updates, they know who to ask questions of and they know who is covering what so they can provide direct inputs.
As the senator mentioned earlier, we also have a range of partners in our national action plan. At the moment, we have eight departments, plus the RCMP, who are partners. It’s led by Global Affairs Canada, National Defence, RCMP, Department of Justice Canada, Public Safety Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Women and Gender Equality Canada and, very importantly in Canada, Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, which is crucial because Canada recognizes we have significant work to do at home.
There are many other things that we’re proud of that we do, but in terms of your question regarding what we can learn from other countries, there is so much, and this is something that we spend a lot of time trying to do. We’ve said for many, many years, that when it comes to this work and national action plans, every country has something to share and something to learn. We don’t want to limit our thinking to so-called like-mindeds or global north or the usual suspects but really open our eyes to good practices everywhere.
To give you a few examples, this element of the civil society participation was actually inspired by Afghanistan. Afghanistan had a steering committee for its national action plan that women sat on directly, and the Netherlands also had something similar. There are themes that are being introduced. Jordan was the first country that had attention to violent extremism in its national action plan. The United States is the only country in the world that has legislated the existence or the requirement to have a national action plan. Colombia referenced in its national action plan the specific importance of recognizing Indigenous women’s traditional approaches to peace and security. Bangladesh has a long history of dealing with natural disasters and climate-related emergencies and looking at the importance of engaging women at community levels in early warning signs. Countries around the world now are looking at increasing use of military and security forces to respond to domestic crises, including those driven by conflict emergencies. There are all kinds of things.
What are we learning from that? I see the chair has his hand on the button, and I could go on forever about this, but the point is there’s quite a lot and we’re always trying to learn and adapt, especially from countries that have been dealing with things in different ways.
Senator Gerba: Thank you.
Senator Dean: I’d like to give you the opportunity to continue with the theme you were discussing, but you’ve alluded to growing countervailing forces operating at the same time as you’re trying to move forward. Transnational repression in Canada, we know particularly from Iran, focusing on Iranian expatriate women, has been highlighted by a Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy study out of the Citizen Lab. On the positive side, are there any further breakthrough activities that you want to talk about? I’m particularly interested in those organic ones that are self-mobilizing.
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you for kindly offering more space as well to respond on that.
Part of why we want to learn from other countries and pick up practices is because opponents or adversaries of this work are adapting quickly. You mentioned the instances of women, including women in Canada, being targeted and harassed. Globally, people are trying to address online and cyber violence targeted against women. We see it constantly included in Canada of targeted violence online against women, including women politicians, parliamentarians, peace builders, human rights defenders, land activists and Indigenous women. We’re trying to address and understand how best to incorporate that into things like our national strategy.
Number one is recognizing that often there are gendered dimensions to these issues. For example, we’re learning more on cyber violence and cyber-threats, and there tends to be, generally speaking, a scale of escalation for threatening someone, or leading or initiating with cyber violence. It starts with dehumanizing contact and then leads to disinformation and then escalates into physical threats. Globally, with women, people tend to skip through those steps on a much faster level and even skip some of them. We’re looking at gender disinformation campaigns. Attacks against women often focus on things like their sexuality or their competence as mothers. Are they promiscuous because they’re engaging with an international organization? We’re trying to assess these and, to the senator’s points earlier, trying to understand what other countries are doing.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, recently created its own regional strategy on women, peace and security, and they have a specific focus on gender cyber-targeted attacks and violence. That’s another thing that we’re looking at as an example of the ways that the nature of threats is changing for women and activists in many different ways.
Senator Dean: On the positive side, could you talk about some other examples or breakthroughs in the other direction? We’ve talked about the challenges and swimming upstream.
Ms. O’Neill: Sure. We’re seeing a lot of organizing and organization, including among young people, which is excellent, and a lot of youth movements involving a lot of men, and younger men. What we used to hear very consistently from younger women is that, in the context of violent extremism, men were looked at as targets because they were potential unemployed masses that could be radicalized, potential terrorists, et cetera, and younger women were not included in the conversation as much. We’re seeing much more that youth movements are broadly more inclusive, and we’re seeing a lot of young women activists play a much more significant role.
The Chair: Mr. Shannon raised his hand. We’re out of time, but I’ll give you a minute if you want to respond.
Mr. Shannon: I simply wanted to add to the point about threats online and in person to women activists, in fact, civil society activists everywhere that it’s becoming increasingly the practice for the programming that Canada deploys in these environments to have dedicated budget lines for the protection of these activists, including online, through digital self-defence and digital hygiene. I was in Iraq as ambassador for two years and saw activists targeted, in some cases, killed, for association with foreign embassies. Thank God not Canada. Nonetheless, it prompts an ongoing ethical discussion of how we can extend some measure of self-defence tools to these activists. Thank you.
Senator Busson: Thank you for being here.
I’m particularly interested in your third national action plan, and I wanted to comment, certainly from my perspective, that the presence of women tends to change the dynamics of conflict resolution, in my experience, and I believe that we could extrapolate that to the experiences that you talk about. In your new plan, could you tell me a little bit about who your stakeholders might be in the consultation process to put this plan together? How would you measure the success of your work so far? Is it participation, or is it the results of set measures or some other combination? Given the countries that you’re dealing with start at different starting points, I suspect that you have different measures for success. Could you comment on that?
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you for the question.
In terms of the stakeholders and the consultation process for drafting our third plan, which we’re in the midst of doing right now, as I mentioned, we have an ongoing relationship with a network of the Women, Peace and Security Network of Canada, and I think it’s about 87 members, individuals and organizations that we have a constant dialogue with. They produce things like recommendations and papers with suggestions for our next plan. We also hear from them directly at periodic meetings. We hear from that group regularly.
We supported them to initiate a national consultation about a year and a half ago. They had a number of online discussion groups, people could make submissions and they had some surveys. They had a range of different approaches in which they tried to reach out, including to groups and individuals who don’t know what the women, peace and security agenda is and yet are in many ways working on it in different aspects, to try to expand the community of people who are attentive to the issues. They provided a series of inputs.
We also did a midpoint assessment of our second national action plan and got an independent consultant to assess where we’ve done well and where we’ve not done well. They engaged a number of people to talk about our relationships as Canada with women in civil society and other parts of the world. How are they experiencing working with our embassies? How have they been experiencing funding, et cetera? What is working for them, what is not and what do they want to see changed? That, plus an ongoing series of just international collaboration with other partners where we’re trying to get best practices or good practices, input, et cetera, has really informed the consultations.
We have also been sharing some elements of thinking about the plan with some select individuals and groups, both within Canada and internationally, including with national women-led Indigenous organizations, so the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and Pauktuutit have provided quite significant inputs to us to date.
I think I’m out of time.
The Chair: Almost out of time, but close enough.
Ms. O’Neill: One of the biggest pieces of feedback we got was to reduce the number of things that we’re tracking and to look much more holistically at the impacts that we’re having. We’re looking at trying to have fewer indicators, more meaningful ones and more stories of longer-term impacts. Right now, we do annual reports. We’re trying to convey these big shifts we’re trying to make in a short period, recognizing, as many women constantly say to us, that peace is not a project that I can describe as a start and end period, so we are looking at different ways of changing the way that we explain the impact of this work as well.
Senator Dean: Thank you again.
The Chair: I’m going to use my privilege as chair to ask a question. I was inspired by Senators MacDonald and Coyle in their questions earlier.
About 20 years ago or so, when I was the permanent rep at the Organization of American States, we were, as Canada, involved in a big mediation-type exercise in Peru. It started as track one in that it was mandated by a resolution of the general assembly, which happened to have taken place in Windsor, Ontario, so we had some ownership of that. However, it quickly became a round table that one could characterize as a track one and a half or track two, an organic thing where women’s groups and civil society groups were also joining because of the nature of Peruvian politics at the time, and we found ourselves in a very interesting position, almost as mediators.
In other work that this committee has done, including discussions that we’ve had in Oslo with our Norwegian counterparts, we know that Norway has a long tradition of mediation and facilitating both track one and track two initiatives.
My question for both of you is, is this something that Canada is doing intrinsically? Can we do this? It seems that the way the WPS agenda has advanced or formalized in some way, we could. Are we nurturing track two-type initiatives in other parts of the world? I’d like both your comments on that, and also Mr. Shannon, because of your extensive experience in the Middle East.
Mr. Shannon: Thank you, chair.
You’ve put your finger on an issue that is very live right now in our department and in my own bureau. We’re in the process of developing a mediation strategy, and in fact, we’ve created in the last two years a mediation advisory board made up of academics, retired diplomats and current serving ambassadors and other senior officials in the department to look at precisely that question. They look at how we are and are not using some of that expertise in mediation that we’ve developed and accrued over the course of many years in sometimes an organic and perhaps ad hoc fashion.
One of the main findings so far is that we do have that expertise, but we don’t track it necessarily. We don’t do a particularly good job of treating it as a discipline within the organization. We are looking at options for creating a bit of a centre of excellence, if you will, internally, just in terms of marshalling this knowledge and thinking about how to then apply other things we care a lot about, including WPS, into that type of work. What I’m describing is still preliminary work, but it describes that there’s a real recognition that there’s a capability there.
Now, whether the intent is necessarily always going to be present, whether it’s appropriate for Canada to play that role in every circumstance, is very much an open question.
The Chair: Ambassador, did you have a comment on that?
Ms. O’Neill: I think he said it fully.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
We’ll go to round two. Technically, we are to end at 12:30, but we don’t have a second panel, so we might go over a little bit, with the indulgence of our witnesses, if you can stay a little bit longer. The committee seems to be quite enthusiastic to ask more questions, which is always a good thing.
Senator R. Patterson: I’ll take it back up to the 10,000-foot view again and focus on the security aspects of the agenda. We know that we, as Canada, need to focus on national security. Traditionally, even globally, it’s been about state security and how we protect our borders, but when I look at the WPS agenda, it is really speaking more about human security. No matter which border you’re in, you’re looking at human security as part of WPS agenda. I’ll give you lots of leeway to respond to this, but how does the WPS agenda start contributing to this discussion on what is human security? As we know, there’s one definition in the UN and one definition in NATO, but at the end of time, if your people don’t feel secure where they live, then it’s going to affect where you are placed globally. Good luck.
Ms. O’Neill: The women, peace and security agenda was formalized in the year 2000, around the same time that the human security agenda became, again, introduced or discussed in a more formalized way. The reason I don’t say it came out at that time was because, as we know, for literally thousands of years, women around the world, including Indigenous women, have been playing very instrumental roles in resolving conflicts between communities in track two — even if very unofficially named resolution — in encouraging parties to come and talk and very much redefining standards of security.
I see them emerging from the same spirit that you just named, and the reason women, peace and security came to the Security Council was because women were saying that this is a security issue that we’re not participating in, but also that we faced gendered insecurity in our own homes. Our children are being recruited by armed groups or gangs. There is the issue of transitional justice and how we are moving forward as communities following war. These are issues that relate to our peace and security, not interstate conflict or intrastate armed conflict in the more traditional sense. They said this belongs at the UN Security Council because other parts of the UN had talked about it, but the foundational resolution of this issue was the first time that the highest security-focused body in the UN said women are not only victims of conflict, they are also essential and powerful agents of change whose security in and of itself is also relevant and important.
How does it influence or shape? I think it has been influencing and shaping each other since their creation and their initiative. This is very much something that women, peace and security activists are constantly saying, namely, that we have to expand the lens of who creates security and what security looks like, as well as the effectiveness of some of the approaches we’ve been using.
Mr. Shannon can now say it much better.
Mr. Shannon: No, that’s perfect.
The Chair: You have about 40 seconds.
Mr. Shannon: I would add that most of our programming in fragile and conflict-affected states is human-centred. We work from the inside out, working alongside our colleagues who do development work and humanitarian work, all of whom take a victim-centred approach when it comes to things like SGVB, sexual and gender-based violence but building outwards to institutions and, ultimately, to governments. In most cases, we don’t partner with governments in FCAS, fragile and conflict-affected states, by their very nature, but we try to influence institutions and organizations that have a say on matters of justice, for example, and human rights and protection of civilians.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator MacDonald: I want to go back again to the Colombia situation because I’m so familiar with it. It was so interesting to meet at a table with FARC guerillas, government officials and people from the general community and see how far they’ve come in such a short period of time. We all remember when Colombia was one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Between the combination of the cartels and the FARC guerillas in the south, it was an extremely dangerous country. The three times I was there, I loved the country. I thought it was a fabulous place, actually. I enjoyed it, mind you, with conditions, I guess. If you could be successful there, what other success stories can you point to? What are the similarities and the differences in the approach to secure success? Are there other areas that you can point to that are successful?
Ms. O’Neill: There are. Much like national action plans, there are bits and pieces of various elements that have been successful and where we’ve seen success. I think the negotiation process with the FARC is one of the more traditional approaches, as we’ve said, with formal negotiations and a signed peace agreement. Something specific to that process was recognition of the fact that there are women combatants in both armed groups and security forces.
As you know very well, upwards of 40% of the FARC was made up of women combatants. When it came time for the demobilization of programs and reintegration into communities, one of the challenges and the errors consistently made was an assumption that the overwhelming majority of combatants were men and that the women will have the same needs as they go through community reintegration and they’ll be interested in the same types of professions, et cetera.
One of the things that has been really noted through the government/FARC process in Colombia is the need to gather data and assume that there will be probably around 30% women combatants who will need to be integrated, demobilized and reintegrated. Regarding some of the earlier rounds of the negotiations with the FARC, some of the demobilization programs included becoming a hairdresser or a seamstress, or women would go through the same process as men where they were integrated back into communities but not given any kind of network, et cetera. To give you an example of successes that have been identified through that process, we now look at things like women have been field commanders. They’ve led logistics teams and been paramedics, et cetera. How do you apply those skills outside of that armed group and make sure they’re much less likely to want to rejoin because they have meaning, dignity and other forms of satisfaction?
We’re seeing that increasingly in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programs that are part of peace agreements, which is a reflection of the fact that we need to make assumptions that there are usually many more women, even in things like, for example, handing weapons back in. For a long time, the procedure was to hand in your weapon and then you would get a reintegration package, cash or otherwise. We would constantly see men forcing women in the forces to give them their weapon. Even women who had been combatants were left without a package. Success stories have been elements of much more attention to issues like that.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Ravalia: The United Nations Fund for Population Activities recently conducted a gender equality survey. One of the conclusions of the survey was that progress to gender equality has stalled globally. Younger men rarely have more gender-equitable attitudes than older men. How does this impact our work on a go-forward basis?
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you for the question.
That’s a very troubling statement. Often, I think there’s an assumption that younger generations will be more inclusive or will automatically transform the institutions that they work in or with. What we’re seeing among young people is a reflection of the pushback globally that we’re experiencing and that you’ve heard significant amounts about. When we say that, maybe it’s helpful to break that down, and I’ll turn to the man on our panel to answer that. I realize what I’m doing. Actually, do you want to start?
Mr. Shannon: No.
Ms. O’Neill: Sorry.
There are a few things. We’re seeing a lot of pushback against women’s rights associated with growing authoritarianism and rollbacks on democracy. I think we’re seeing that in part because people are taking much more seriously the work that women are doing to organize. At the very beginning, it was seen like, “Yes, you can have a resolution and you can organize. It’s nice. You women will do your thing.” Now there are real challenges to power and traditional power structures that are emerging, and traditional institutions are being forced to become much more transparent and inclusive. We’re seeing push back, I think, in part because of that.
We’re also seeing a whole lot of messaging targeted at young people with these messages for a number of different reasons. I think it’s important to break down why. Russia is one of the primary messengers on this. To some degree, of course, there’s enormous, real commitment internally about maintaining the so-called traditional family power structures internally being dependent on that. I think Russia is also seeing cleavages among traditional alliances where they’re able to use the ideas — they call it gender ideology or notions of gender equality — to divide traditional allies and, therefore, weaken their opposition. It’s as much a tactic as potentially driven by real issues or demands. And there’s also China. Using different approaches, China is undermining efforts around issues like women, peace and security of which people have different kinds of analysis and understandings. Canadian academic Anne Marie Goetz has written about how women, peace and security is an approach that very much undermines traditional Chinese approaches to developing influences globally. It’s transparency on openness, and even if not on condition aid, it’s on aid that accompanies development that accompanies certain standards of respect for human rights, openness, et cetera.
I say that because I don’t think it’s just natural that a younger generation sees women as lesser. There are very powerful messages and very deliberate, strategic and targeted approaches at young men and women, specifically young men, that are orchestrated by adversaries of this work.
Mr. Shannon: As a diplomat, I spent a lot of time thinking about how we communicate our values abroad. I mentioned that I was in Iraq for two years, where, if I’m candid, I think the way that we had talked about WPS, for example, in that context was clumsy and not particularly well adapted to the local environment.
I was privileged, in my first year, to work alongside General Carignan, who was commanding the NATO mission in Iraq. I was able to see the way that she was able to relate the importance of this agenda, even in operational terms, describing the kind of illiteracy on these issues that the Iraqi army carried through the loss of Mosul and the loss of one third of its territory. There was a gender component to that, such as the inability to work with local communities and local women, to collect intelligence and to think operationally about how to work with the female portion of that population. She was able to relate that in a way that was comprehensible. It wasn’t preachy. It was presented very much as a matter of self-interest and of effectiveness for the force.
To your point, demographics won’t save us. We need to customize and adapt our messaging in every country that we engage in.
Senator Coyle: Well, we could go on all day with the two of you. Thank you again.
This is a new position that you are in for Canada, although we’ve had these plans before. As you now look forward — I know you’re confirmed until 2025, but I’m not just talking about the rest of your term, which may be renewed, or you may not want it to be, who knows. I am talking about this position. I think it is important for Canada to have this position. If you were to advise the government on how to strengthen the impact that this position has the potential to have, tell us what you would tell them.
Ms. O’Neill: Thanks for that question.
As you mentioned, Canada is the first country in the world to have an ambassador for women, peace and security. I often note that we did, as I used to say, steal the idea — my colleagues said we were inspired by and I should adapt my wording — from the African Union. The head of the African Union has a special envoy representative for women, peace and security. Many countries have someone, as Ulric mentioned. Ulric’s the women, peace and security champion for Canada. He’s also our focal point in this international network. Many countries have that.
Canada is the only country that elevated it to the title or position or level of ambassador. I must say that it’s an exceptional door opener. It’s a title that is recognized. We struggle a lot with jargon and terms that don’t necessarily mean anything to people or that just aren’t accessible. People know the term “ambassador,” and it gets me in a lot of doors. I would advise that continuing this title is very important for whoever follows me.
As part of my mandate, I provide direct advice to ministers. I try to ensure that people hear unfiltered, direct advice, as well as working very much within our systems to integrate this work. The most useless thing I could do would be to try to aggregate work on this and try to do it all myself out of my small office or have things redirected. Ulric is very generous in often coordinating because we want to ensure that where there’s a system in place for the teams and systems that exist to deal with women, peace and security, to speak to it at testimonies, report on it and address crises and issues, it should be integrated everywhere else. Whenever I get a request, if someone else can do it or if it doesn’t need the title on whatever it is, then let’s distribute it as much as humanly possible.
I think I have the best job in the world. It’s wonderful to have this position, but we’re always trying to ensure, with very open arms, that it’s also effectively, to use a jargon term, mainstreamed in the rest of our government.
Senator Coyle: Do I have more time?
The Chair: No, you don’t, but thank you very much for a great question.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Ambassador, you mentioned the African Union having a plan, and I understand that you also took inspiration from it.
How is your collaboration with the African Union and, more specifically, how does Canada support the African Union to ensure better representation of African women in peace negotiation processes?
Ms. O’Neill: Thank you for both questions. I’ll let my colleague answer the second one.
Mr. Shannon: Following the last summit with the African Union last fall, we have had a desire to engage in a dialogue with the African Union on peacekeeping.
As I’m sure you understand, the issue is that peacekeeping in the African Union doesn’t enjoy the same level of funding as peacekeeping in the United Nations. This has been a hot topic for a number of years, but we still want to start a dialogue with the African Union to share best practices that we’ve developed, including through the Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations.
We want to see if there’s an opportunity for partnerships with African Union member states and the African Union itself to include countries that produce troops and police officers in our operations. That is ongoing. This is one of the issues we want to engage on together through the office of the new Canadian permanent observer to the African Union, Ben Marc Diendéré.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[English]
Ms. O’Neill: To your first question about support for it at the African Union, Canada has supported the office of what’s effectively my counterpart, the special representative of the chairperson on women, peace and security. Through her office, and Canada supported this work, they developed a Continental Results Framework. Through engagement with women and men in countries across Africa, they’ve identified common or shared goals or objectives so that it makes for easier comparing and contrasting across African countries. It gives more shared impetus around Africans organizing around women, peace and security and what that looks like specifically in the continent. Our work has been both advocacy politically and as it relates to conflict resolution and support for peace, as well as supporting the institution of the African Union to, again, mainstream this work throughout its own functions.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[English]
We’ve come to the end, and we have maybe just a moment or two. I’m just wondering if either of you would like to make any additional comments. As Senator Coyle said, we could be here for hours enjoying a discussion with you. Is there anything from questions and comments that you might want to address? I’ll give you a few moments each, if that’s all right.
Mr. Shannon: If there’s one takeaway from my comments, I’d like to assure you that when we talk about mainstreaming WPS in the work that Global Affairs Canada does, it’s more than a buzzword. It’s something that we work on. With my colleagues in development, in humanitarian and in peace and security, which I’m responsible for, we’re all looking at ways to move away from treating WPS as a sort of a niche policy area. It’s not something you bolt on or inject into a conflict situation midway. It has to be present, top of mind, from the moment a crisis breaks out. That’s one of the most fiendishly difficult issues we’re wrestling with right now. We are in a polycrisis environment. We’re juggling multiple intense crises happening at once.
Ensuring that we inculcate an awareness that the gender lens is something we do practically by, for example, making it mandatory as part of our training package for our outgoing heads of mission, is fairly recent, as well as for program managers across all of those programs — humanitarian development and peace and security. It has to be part of the core tool kit that all of our diplomats have so that subconsciously, even, when a crisis breaks out or develops, that gender lens is present and is therefore automatically part of our programming responses, advocacy, diplomacy and all of the tool kits we deploy for effect.
Ms. O’Neill: Thanks for this opportunity. There are a few things that I’d love parliamentarians to keep doing.
These hearings on the topic are very useful as focusing exercises, but, exactly to Mr. Shannon’s point, don’t isolate it to hearings about women, peace and security. As you have witnesses or other hearings, are you hearing directly from women? In particular, are you hearing from women in civil society, multiple different groups — ones that represent the “plus” in GBA Plus as well as urban, rural, age differences, et cetera?
There are the questions that you ask people. There are few things more action-forcing than preparing for testimony that is on the record to a parliamentary body. People testifying should expect they might get questions related to the women, peace and security agenda, and questions that are informed, not just, “Did you do a Gender-based Analysis Plus on this?” but, “What were the main findings from the GBA Plus, and how did you adapt your approach to it?” and not just people with “women, peace and security” or “peace and security” in their titles but asking everyone these questions, to the point of Ulric’s mainstreaming, and assessing the research you get done so you are constantly informed with this work.
There is also parliamentary diplomacy or the ways you engage with other parliamentarians in the world. We talked about pushback and threats. There are harmful and extremely false notions that this is a Western-driven agenda that came out of countries like Canada. It’s untrue and insulting to women around the world who have risked their lives to advocate for it. As you talk about what Canada is doing, please encourage other countries and recognize the great contributions they’re making. Bring them back to us. It’s very helpful to our messaging when we share that. Admitting we have challenges at home is a source of strength. Admitting that our Armed Forces and RCMP — we’re all struggling with various issues. It’s something we’re doing as a country because it’s a reflection of how much we value the issue and want to improve. As you relate to other parliamentarians, especially ones who might not be in the “usual suspects” of countries, please keep this on the agenda and really seek out ways that they’re leading us and bring those back to us.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you for those pointers.
On behalf of the committee, I’d like to thank Ambassador O’Neill and Director General Shannon for being with us. This was a rich discussion. I think we have some very good takeaways. I want to thank you and your teams. Thank you for all the work you are doing for Canada in what Mr. Shannon just characterized as a poly-crisis environment. We recognize that.
Colleagues, there are two items before I adjourn the meeting. I would appreciate if the guest senators inform the permanent members of these.
First, I want to advise you that the draft report of the committee’s study on Canada’s foreign service will be distributed tomorrow by email. It’s important to take the time to review that document as the committee will meet next Wednesday in camera to consider the draft report with a view to tabling the report in the Senate during the week of November 20.
Second, next Thursday, we will again meet in camera to discuss the scope and focus of our study on Canada’s engagement with Africa, the order of reference the Senate approved last week. We’re going to send out some questions to help guide the discussion on the Africa study, so please keep an eye out for that as well. It will help our discussion when we have it.
If there are no other items, colleagues, we will adjourn. Thank you.
(The committee adjourned.)